6

Franklin came back into the waiting room, Althea beside him. She wore her Sunday-best coat, and she clutched her black purse against her stomach. Her expression was fierce.

Her gaze found me and leveled me to that couch.

“What happened to my daughter, Smokey?” she asked in a voice I had never heard from her. It sounded like she blamed me. Maybe she did. I had taken Lacey to school that morning, and I had brought her to the hospital.

“I’m not certain about the sequence of events,” I said.

“Don’t talk around it,” she snapped. “What happened?”

I swallowed, ignoring my instinct to protect the boys from the harshness of this. They’d already seen the harshness. They knew.

“The doctor will have to tell you about the injuries,” I said. “I’m pretty sure she was raped—”

“She was,” Jimmy said. “I seen that guy—” I put my hand on his, silencing him.

“—and she was beaten pretty badly,” I said. “The boys are the ones who found her. They saved her. They called me.”

“Not me?” Althea asked, looking at Keith as if he had committed some kind of grave sin.

“That guy had her in a hotel, Mom,” he said. “Jimmy ran upstairs and got her free and told me to call Uncle Bill.”

“Why not the police?” she asked Jimmy.

Jimmy frowned at her. “Aunt Althea, the police don’t come to places like that.”

“Places like what?” she asked, looking at me again.

“Look,” I said. “The boys haven’t told me everything yet.

Sit down, Althea, Franklin. Let them tell us—”

“You know where she was,” Althea said to me. “You got her and brought her here.”

“Yes,” I said. “I did. And I’m not sure exactly what happened either. She was already hurt and the man was long gone when I got there.”

“So you haven’t caught him,” Althea said. “Not yet,” I said.

“It’s okay,” Jimmy said. “I gots—”

I squeezed his hand again. I wanted to control how this conversation went. Franklin and Althea were already upset. I didn’t want this to get worse.

“Raped,” Franklin said, and sat heavily on the couch. “How could that happen?”

“She was wearing a really short skirt, Dad,” Keith said. “Enough,” I said. “What happened is not Lacey’s fault.”

“Smoke, we been warning her about them guys,” Jimmy said. “She shoulda listened.”

“What guys?” Franklin asked, his voice calm. “Did you know about these guys, Smokey?”

They wanted to blame me. I understood that.

“No,” I said. “I didn’t know anything about this.”

Althea still loomed over me, clutching her purse as if she were debating using it as a weapon.

“So who is ‘we’?” she asked Jimmy.

“Me and Keith,” Jimmy said. “Mostly me. I seen stuff like this before, with my mom.”

“Jim,” I said. “Enough.”

“Stuff like what?” Althea asked. Her tone had changed. She knew about Jimmy’s mom. She and Franklin and Laura were the only ones who did.

“Aunt Althea,” Jimmy said. “It was one of them pimp hotels. He was recruiting her.”

“My daughter wouldn’t be stupid enough to fall for that,” Franklin said.

Jimmy was shaking his head. He started to speak and I squeezed his hand a third time to silence him.

“Jim,” I said, but he talked over me.

“They don’t ask you to join up like the Army,” he said.

“They promise you stuff, and then you go with them, and they hurt you and tell you you’re no good and they turn you. I seen it before, and Lace, she was yelling at the guy that he’d told

her she was gonna be modeling, not be alone with him. She thought there’s be other people there.”

“Modeling,” Franklin said numbly.

“That’s one they use lots,” Jimmy said. “That gets lotsa girls. The pretty ones specially. My mom, she used to slap up some of the girls and tell them not to be stupid because they was lied to, and they had to get used to—”

“Enough,” I said as forcefully as I could. Keith was frowning at Jimmy. It wasn’t just that I didn’t want Keith to hear this. I didn’t think Franklin or Althea needed all of the details.

“I was just tellin’ ’em, Smoke.” Jimmy pulled his hand away from me. “You said nice people don’t know this stuff.”

And they didn’t. Nor did they need to know how deep their daughter had gotten into this mess.

“Where is that pimp hotel?” Franklin asked me. “It’s the Starlite,” I said.

His mouth opened slightly, then closed. He shook his head once. “Right next to the school?”

“That’s how come she could sneak,” Jimmy said. “They do stuff like that, looking for girls. That’s how they got half the girls what worked with my mom—”

“Jimmy,” I said. “I said enough.”

He scooted back on the couch. He had started to do that lately when I attempted to discipline him. Or he would just walk out of the room.

Franklin didn’t seem to notice. “Right next to the school,” he repeated.

He cupped his head with his hands, his fingers deep in his thinning hair. Althea glared at him, then at me.

“You tell me what happened,” she said.

I didn’t even know where to start. Finally, I decided to concentrate on today only.

“I was on the phone. The operator broke in and asked if I would accept an emergency call from Keith Grimshaw—”

“I gave you dimes!” Jimmy said to Keith.

“The line was busy,” Keith said. “I knew you wanted Uncle Bill, so I got the operator to get him.”

“It was the right thing,” I said, not wanting the boys to fight. We didn’t need more tension here.

I looked at Althea and Franklin. I wanted them to know how fast all of this happened. “Keith told me that Lacey was in trouble and I should come to the Starlite.”

“You didn’t ask why they were there?” Althea asked.

“I heard trouble and Starlite and Lacey,” I said. “I left immediately.”

“Smoke comes busting in like Marshal Dillon,” Jimmy said, “his gun out and his coat swinging—”

“Jimmy,” I said.

Althea wasn’t paying any attention. “I thought you said you didn’t know what was going on.”

“I didn’t,” I said, feeling like I was the twelve-year-old. “But I knew that Lacey was rebelling.”

“Rebelling,” Althea said.

“The makeup, the clothes.” I said.

“We stopped her from doing that last year,” Althea said.

“No,” I said. “You just stopped her from wearing it to and from the house.”

“And you knew?” she asked.

I had had enough. If they wanted to blame someone, they needed to blame the creep who went after their daughter.

“You knew too,” I said. “And don’t tell me you didn’t. I wasn’t the only one taking her to and from school. When she came to the van after school, she always had some leftover makeup on her face or she was adjusting her clothing. You knew, just like I did.”

Althea raised her chin and narrowed her eyes, but she didn’t deny it.

“And see what it caused?” Franklin asked, still looking down. “I knew it. I knew—”

“It wasn’t her clothes, Franklin,” I said.

“That’s why they were interested in her in the first place,” Franklin said. “They knew—”

“No, Dad,” Keith said. “She just wanted to be pretty. She wanted to grow up to be a model or an actress or something, and you wouldn’t let her.”

“Those aren’t professions for smart girls,” Franklin said, but he sounded defeated.

“How do you know that’s what she wanted?” Althea asked Keith. “She confided in you?”

“No, Mom,” Keith said. “I looked at her diary last night.”

“It’s in code,” Althea said, then flushed. Clearly she’d been trying to break in as well.

“I know the code,” Keith said. “It’s not a hard one.”

I shifted slightly. We were finally getting somewhere, whether the Grimshaws knew it or not. “Why did you look in her diary, Keith?”

“Jimmy’s been keeping an eye on her, Uncle Bill,” Keith said. “He thought she was going to get into trouble.”

“I told you,” Jimmy said to me. “I told you she was going to end up like my mom.”

Althea winced.

“You didn’t believe me,” Jimmy said.

“I was wrong,” I said, but not to him. I was looking at Lacey’s parents. “I thought Jimmy was overreacting. I thought Lacey was just going through normal teenage rebellion. I had no idea.”

“Well, you gots to listen to me,” Jimmy said. “On this stuff, I know it. I growed up with it, and I know it.”

I looked away from everyone. I had to.

“So,” Althea said, her voice surprisingly steady. “What did you see that we didn’t?”

An adult question, one that I should have asked Jimmy long ago.

“There’s been men talking to her,” Jimmy said. “Not boys, neither. Not kids from school. Men.”

Men. I closed my eyes just for a moment.

“Then I seen her yesterday. She was outside, smoking a cigarette, and—”

“Smoking?” Franklin asked, like that was the worst thing she could have done.

“Let him finish,” Althea said softly.

“And this guy,” Jimmy says, “he comes talking to her. But I—something happened in class—and when I looked again, she was gone. This guy, he was old, and that scared me, so I asked Keith if he knew who the guy was, and Keith said no, he didn’t, but he could find out in her diary.”

I ran a hand over my face. The ridges of the scar tissue along my cheek felt accusatory. I’d missed these signals before with friends, with clients.

And now with Lacey.

God. I had a blind spot, and it was the worst kind.

“Why didn’t you talk to me?” I had told Jimmy expressly to talk with me if things got bad with Lacey.

“Because I wasn’t sure of nothing. Maybe the guy was a teacher, yelling at her for smoking or something,” Jimmy said. “Smoke, you always find out what’s going on before you do something or tell someone, so I figured I’d do that.”

I suppressed a sigh of irritation. He had tried, but he was still a boy. He hadn’t known what the right choice was.

“That’s why you thought you had to break into Lacey’s locker,” I said.

“What?” Franklin asked.

“Jimmy brought a screwdriver so that he could break into Lacey’s locker if he had to,” I said.

“I figured if Keith didn’t get no information, the locker might have something,” Jimmy said.

“He didn’t need to break in, though,” Keith said. “This guy’d been taking her to lunch at the Starlite Café, telling her how famous she was gonna be and how pretty she was and how everyone would think she was the best model ever.”

I almost said again, You should have called me, but it didn’t matter. They didn’t. They were investigating. They thought they were doing the right thing.

“So, I figured we’d see if she went with him again, and we’d follow.” Jimmy looked defiantly at me and then at Franklin. “It was my idea to skip math.”

Althea let out a small laugh. She knew what the boys were worried about and how ridiculous it was.

Franklin raised his head. Apparently that got through to him, too. “If you hadn’t skipped math, God knows where my daughter would be right now.”

God didn’t know. But I did.

“So we got our coats and stuff and went to the café,” Jimmy said, “just as they was leaving. He was taking her to the hotel, and I knew. I just knew what was happening next. I seen it more than once.”

Keith was frowning. Althea’s expression softened. She had forgotten—or maybe she hadn’t known—exactly how awful Jimmy’s life had been before we came to Chicago.

“I told Keith to track down Smoke and get him here right away, and Keith did. So Keith shouldn’t be in trouble.” Jimmy said that last really fast.

“He’s not in trouble,” Althea said. “Go on.”

Jimmy nodded, once. Businesslike. Adult. My heart twisted.

“They was already upstairs,” he said. “That…asshole… he…I guess he gots a room there.”

The word “asshole” sounded so wrong coming from Jimmy and yet so right. It was a sign of how very upset this made him, how angry he was, that he used that word and didn’t even apologize to me or to Althea.

Maybe he hadn’t even noticed. Althea certainly hadn’t.

And Franklin was beyond disciplining the kids for anything.

He just stared at Jimmy, his eyes almost fixed, his fists clenched and resting on his knees.

“The guy at the desk, he don’t care, and he wouldn’t give me his extra key.” Jimmy’s voice shook with frustration. “So I runned up the stairs and got to the room and tried the door, thinking that you know…”

He paused then and looked at me. My breath caught. He was censoring himself.

“You know,” he repeated, “that maybe the door was unlocked.”

Jimmy had clearly hoped that the man had been too eager or too comfortable to lock the door. But Jimmy was thinking of his mother, who was already a prostitute when he was born. Sometimes men—sometimes she—didn’t lock the door.

But in this instance, the door had to be locked. This man, this pimp, this procurer, this asshole, didn’t want Lacey to get away from him quickly or anyone to get to her easily.

“But the door was locked. No deadbolt though which was good because otherwise I’da had to wait for Smokey.” Jimmy glanced at me again, swallowing hard. He wasn’t sure how much detail to go into. I wasn’t either. I’d let him tell it.

“But,” Jimmy said, “there was yelling, and Lacey was telling him she didn’t want to be there, that she was supposed to be a model and then…”

Jimmy let out a small breath, and bit his lower lip.

“Then what?” Franklin asked, but the words had no force to them. It was as if he had to ask, but he didn’t want to hear the answer.

I wasn’t sure any of us wanted to hear the answer.

“He hit her so hard I heard it.” Jimmy closed his eyes for a moment as if he were steeling himself. “That’s when I knowed I couldn’t wait for Smoke.”

He looked at me again. I gave him an encouraging smile.

He had clearly been worried I would yell at him for not waiting.

“So,” he said, “I took the doorknob off.”

“You what?” Althea was frowning. She didn’t understand how he could do that.

“With the screwdriver. I worked real quick but real quiet. I catched the knob before it fell and got the pieces, then I pushed the door open—and I didn’t think no more, Smoke. I pulled that guy off her and I hit him and I hit him and I’da kept hitting him if he didn’t run away. I’da even followed him if Lace wasn’t on that bed all hurt. I mighta killed him, I think, Smoke.”

All of that, spoken to me, all of that filled with fear.

Jimmy’s eyes were red-rimmed now and he was trembling.

I pulled him against me. “You were spectacular,” I said. “You are spectacular. You’re amazing.”

I wasn’t going to berate him for failing to contact me. This kid did everything he could think of to save Lacey.

He pushed away from me, shaking his head. “I wasn’t fast enough. He was already on her. He—you know—ruined her. You know. Lace’ll—”

“He did not ruin her.” Althea took a step closer to Jimmy.

For a moment, I thought she’d hit him.

Jimmy leaned back, looking up at her, his face gray. Keith, on the other side of me, peered around my arm.

“My daughter,” Althea said, shaking a fist at Jimmy, “is not ruined. She will never be ruined. She is a crime victim. That’s all. Nothing more. Do you got that?”

Jimmy opened his mouth, and for one horrified moment, I thought he would argue with her. I thought all of the tension in the room would boil over in a way that all of us would regret.

Then he took a deep, steadying breath. “Yes, ma’am. Ain’t nobody what knows that better than me.”

And he raised his chin just slightly.

All the fight left her face. She bit her lower lip, then closed her eyes.

“This is not going to be easy,” she said, more to herself than to anyone else.

“No, ma’am,” Jimmy said.

“Right near the school,” Franklin said again, as if the rest of the conversation hadn’t happened. He looked up, his gaze meeting mine. Behind the shock, I could see anger just starting to form. “We do everything we can to keep our babies safe, and these criminals set up right next to the school.”

“We needs to call the police,” Keith said softly, in a tone that suggested he wanted to calm the entire family.

“You think they’ll actually pay attention to this?” Althea asked bitterly. “They had to know what was going on in that hotel.”

I wasn’t going to confirm that. All of the adults—and Jimmy—knew she was right.

“But we are going to take care of this, aren’t we, Smokey?” Her voice had an intensity I had never heard before.

I kept the boys close, but I looked up at her. There was no shock on her face. Unlike her husband, she hadn’t retreated mentally. She knew what was happening, and she knew that the future had altered for everyone.

And she knew what she was asking me.

“No,” I said to Althea. “We are not going to take care of this.”

Her eyes flashed. “Our family—”

“Has done more for me than I could ever repay,” I said. “Let me handle this.”

“I’ll help you,” Franklin said.

That was just what I needed. A civilian to get in my way. “No,” I said. “You have to help your family. You let me take care of things.”

“Smoke’ll fix it,” Jimmy said, finally sounding young again.

Young and too naïve, even for him.

“I can’t fix it,” I said tiredly. “But I can do what the police won’t.”

Althea’s eyes narrowed. “See that you do,” she said.